Brooks, you're wrong. You're just going to have to take our word for it. Nobody gets our page view data. Not partners, not family members, and not to settle a forum argument about whether the forum is 100x our editorial view. It's not.

And thanks for belittling the work that everybody who contributes editorial to the site provides.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

Couple of notes:

1.) Contrary to popular belief, I want the PTO to succeed. You only get one bite at this big of an apple.

2.) Part of the problem is the standard with which the PTO is asking themselves to be held to. For example, when they launched their Tour in 2022, and events were priced at our higher than IRONMAN events in the area -- there was a lot of outcry. Why? They hadn't earned that price point by proving it (hence the "Athlete Board slashes prices" release like 48 hours later). With the broadcasts, it's that they are supposed to be world class. And I thought they would have it in Miami. And it wasn't. It was a serviceable, typical triathlon broadcast. But that isn't going to progress the narrative. It just divides the existing pie.

3.) On the media side -- that tension isn't an ST exclusive thing. We're just the only ones attaching ourselves to it publicly. But there's a general unease about how we, as endemic media, fit into the story that the PTO wants to tell. We have to be able to tell stories independently / authentically. If we are going to attend events, we need critical access. Otherwise, as Eric mentioned, we will spend the money on travel elsewhere. And then we have to have a conversation about how editorial image rights will work. If we don't have pictures, we aren't going to post a race report with a stock photo of a location, or a generic photo of the athlete that won -- that drives me bonkers.

4.) I hope we can figure it out.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

I was really talking about the punters here on ST and not ST Admin.

Hah, it's OK.

Me, today, apparently:

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

We can passionately disagree on topics. I’ve not once belittled your editorial staff. Suggesting I have I don’t think is a fair point to bring to the discussion.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Non triathletes have never and will never watch triathlon. These athletes should be beyond thankful that a billionaire fell out of the sky with delusions of this being a marketable sport with a sizeable TV contract coming.

Brooks,
Have you ever heard of Mommy bloggers? Some of them make 100k a month. Youtube fitness influencers (not talking Sanders here, but much bigger) can pull in the same amount or more.

So it makes perfect sense to me this site would seek to use well written editorial to stake out a space in the google search traffic among various cyclist and fittness people. Google presumably places a premium value on this site due to its history and the sheer amount of links on it, so I assume front page articles could actually become worth a lot of money over time.

Ever been on those recipe sites that take forever to tell the story about the ingredients or the recipe before actually telling you the recipe, and you're scrolling by ads the entire time?

Slowtwitch isn't there (yet?) because it appears to use it's own ad server they presumably sell ad space direct with. BUT... if at some point hundreds of thousands of clicks start flowing through to those front page articles as cyclists look for data on tires, and runners look for info on races...? Well, maybe we'll start to see a bunch of media network ads embedded in the content.

At least, that's how I assume ST would try to monetize their content, and the front page articles are much more important from that perspective.

Is the issue that you are not getting the access you need on site or that you do not get to own the photos you took or both? Talbot has been pretty loudly saying the media access was a disaster and the PTO needs to do a lot better so I hope things change moving forward. The latter is a bit odd as it seems like athletes/managers/agents/sponsors are super happy about the PTO supplying ample content for them to pump out almost instantly. It would be truly bizarre for them to be making everyone, but the media happy. That seems to be incredibly counterproductive.

Also, preach ThailandUltras. The T100 series is awesome and I'm grateful I get to watch the best go head to head all year long. There's plenty to nitpick about how they've done things thus far, but I do not understand why anybody is anything other than stoked that this is happening in 2024. I will gladly give the PTO my money for an AG race within driving distance to me (SF/LA/Vegas).

I agree on this. Brooks is passionate but I don't think he's being anything but fair here.

Honestly - only one podcast (and I listen to a LOT of them) surprised me with their T100 response - and that wasn't ST's. There's a ways to go - but some have buried them and some are ridiculously optimistic. It wasn't perfect - but I think Brooks and his contribution to this forum doesn't deserve to be disrespected because I don't see how he has disrespected you at all.

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DFRU - Detta Family Racing Unit...the kids like it and we all get out and after it...gotta keep the fam involved!

Can I get this bottle of bourbon instead, I'll even let it be a craft one from Vermont.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

We have to be able to tell stories independently / authentically


With this I agree 100 percent !

But sorry for belittelijg you front page as well you can't to this with paying 100 or 200 dollars per article.
And let's be fair most ironman reporting that was historically done taking results from a tracker was not exactly groundbreaking journalism.
It sounds a bit like you are looking for issues for things you can't do when you have not the budget to do what you actually want to to .
Maybe you should have a pay section and do more quality journalism

i did try to listen to the podcast but you lost me talking about car problems at the start and take with abo dhabi where even world triathlon does not agree with your view as they wanted to run the race.

Anyway, I don't think this video (by Talbot, who you hear say "fucking" to Magnus Ditlev) has been posted here yet, and it is an absolute must watch.

Feels like actually being there - before, during and after.



Reminds one what camaraderie exists between these guys, and that Laidlow will still toss minijokes about his relationship with Long, and that Long is so funny when he's not trying to be a youtuber. Also, that they're all humans.

Way better than the actual race coverage, for sure.

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"FTP is a bit 2015, don't you think?" - Gustav Iden

So, it's both, but with a twist to what's being said.

1.) Access -- as Eric mentioned on site, there wasn't going to be *any* media access on site for the PTO race (different from access for the CLASH and World Triathlon events held). At which point, we might as well pack up and go home. Eventually there were sites offered, but most were the same as those offered to general admission / public. That doesn't work.

2.) Photo rights -- this assumes that PTO will continue, at either T100 races, to not offer endemic media the ability to take photos from the course, and they offer pool photography coverage. We have nothing, anywhere, that tells us what the usage guidelines are for those photos; how long we have rights to use those photos; whether the PTO can later ask us to remove photos from our editorial.

Contrast that with IRONMAN -- we know exactly what we're allowed to use, and for how long, who to credit for it, and don't have to worry about pulling photos down from old coverage.

If we aren't going to be on site -- which is probably what we're looking at for the remainder of the T100 year, based on how his experience was in Miami, with the exception of me doing T100 LLV as a story on what the age group experience looks like -- we *have* to know, with precision, what our rights to use photos are. I've asked for better clarification on this, and we haven't gotten it.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

Fun fact: the #1 reason why we can't use Google ad servers is...forum content being deemed explicit / inappropriate by Google-bot.

You otherwise are nail on head on domain authority, and a lot of the back-end work I'm doing (and some of what Jordan has been doing) on the search side of the front-page house. We also tend to get a Google News listing ~50% of the time for breaking stuff, in part because we're fast, and in part because we're pretty in-depth while being on deadline.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

Nice video, and I think quite representative of the type of content needed to create more interest in these events. If they could work out how to splice some of this into the race day broadcast it would improve significantly - I appreciate that would be quite challenging.

You guys have likely looked at the publisher requirements more than I, but have you considered adroll?

In know on the marketing client side things that get blocked by Google's aggressive false positive filters make it through adroll.

Thanks for clarifying. Hard to argue with the position you are taking, but I'm kinda shocked you're in this position in the first place. T100 seems to be doing the big things mostly right, but getting a lot of the small details wrong, which is a bit worrying. I do hope this can get resolved by the time T100 gets back to the US.

Agree that the UNFILTERED video is excellent. The pre race tent has a chance to be real spicy towards the end of the year. Credit to T100 for pumping out the YT videos with a firehose. I will gladly watch it all.

That is an excellent video. I kind of wish they would identify who's who though. I mean, I can recognize Ditlev, Long, Brownlee, West and maybe 1 or 2 others but the rest were hard to figure out. Guess I just don't watch enough tri videos. :)

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

After listening to the complaints on the ST pod cast I had a few thoughts:

1. Totally fair to be upset about changing rules last minute.
2. But really, those changes seem to be relatively minor and at least for myself I had a little vibe that this was old guard complaining about not being deemed important by new guys. I've been in the situation as well where I had full access to events for decades and over time a new crew replaces the old one and suddenly I'm the outsider. Never fun.
3. I don't see this being an issue anywhere the course is on public property. The PTO didn't own the sidewalk in Ibiza or Milwaukee or Singapore other than the narrow strip of road/walkway that was being competed on. I could sit anywhere I wanted on the course in Milwaukee and shoot video and tell anyone to kick rocks if they asked me to leave. So this is entirely an artifice of running an event in a stadium.
4. I've also been in a sports media environment where tens of millions were invested (not close to PTO though) over several years and some of the biggest names in commercial television were involved. There were exactly the same endemic media battles going on. I think these investors/media companies look at this as wanting to have all the content because they putting up all the money and they don't want anyone a.) riding their coattails and b.) scooping them with great content or c. making them look bad. (incidentally, everyone who put money on the media startup project in that case lost their shirts)

Think about the number one PTO clip from last year. "Join me?" It was Talbot upstaging everything the PTO did (with the potential for actual damage if the content turned out to be bad and Talbot wasn't a cool dude but a nefarious one) that weekend. PTO has a right to say... "hey we could have owned this story and made hay with it" or "this could have turned ugly and made our premiere athlete look bad".

And I realize the retort is, "all well and good, just tell us that up front next time".

All this said, what the media control got me thinking. I'm always trying to figure out what the hell the PTO is really doing besides wasting lots of money on this stuff with no chance of a network TV deal to pay enough to recover their contracts. And hearing the ST podcast combined with the Talbot/Jack convo I had the thought that PTO might be opening to do the full on Netflix drive to survive thing. Race to Survive has a cool ring to it. I could see several seasons worth of content that is syndicated for years with demand for more seasons being created out of all the content they are making. Athletes in hotels, behind the scenes, etc. PTO is owning everything and they might not want to have anyone competing for ownership of footage in that scenario. That's the most pro PTO conclusion I can come up with, that they have a multi seasons series they are creating with this stuff and the broadcast and endemic media is just incidental in a sense.

If so, maybe it's genius if they execute well. If they aren't.... well, then I still think PTO is bonkers.

I think the issue is more the access that some media can or can't get to certain parts of the race venue, and the race organization, can limit access to certain areas of a course whether it's on private or public roads. You aren't getting behind the scenes unless you have certain credentials. I would be curious if there was a media zone area that was accessible for all accredited media members, or if it was just simply VIP only areas basically post race.

Funny/weird/happy ending "media" issue came up about 10 years ago, Eric Lagerstrom started doing on bike cameras during the bike, it started out in small Conti Cups that no one cared about, and he would do voice overs on the bike. Really great video content. Suddenly WT put a stop to it, because technically it was the propery of WT because it was a WT sanctioned ITU event. I believe it sorta became an "gentleman's agreement" that athletes could use the videos on socials as long as they put the WT logo in it and/or acknowledged It was WT "property". I think both parties sorta came together and said "wait a min this is good content" and came to a sensible solution that worked for all parties. I think at the WTCS level it wasn't allowed unless it was part of the actual broadcast and thus it was controlled by them from the start (I think they only did a few on bike camera shots and realized it was a more chaotic livestream vs the editted version that the athletes could put on to smooth out the video.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

The mirror first class 'unfiltered' for the women's race. Good (unseen before) interviews of Lee/LCB/Lawrence/Ryf @27 mins.

AB - Ya, another great video. You could tell that India was just completely overcome with emotion. Also, the girls showed a lot of sportsmanship, with all the hugging and congratulating.

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

That is a completely fair point. Just add in some names!